Yep, you heard that right…I created my own custom sf2 file!

You may be wondering, “why on earth would you do that,” or “what is an sf2 file??” Well, allow me to explain.

Long story short, I wanted to get my hands on/recreate the Korg Miku Stomp guitar pedal, but that was not going to happen any time soon lol. This was my way of attempting to get around that somehow. By creating a custom sf2 file, I basically have my own (janky) version of the pedal that I can use with programs like MuseScore. If enough people want to hear the long version, I’ll gladly make a video about how I went through the whole process. It’s definetly far from perfect, but at least 1 of the instruments sounds decent enough so I’ll take it lol. Here’s a clip of what the xylo and vibes sound like: https://youtu.be/ll5eS0ghTCQ

There are a TON of issues with the file (like the bass notes lagging behind, weird attacks with the glockenspiel, and a lot of other things), so I’m honestly not sure if I’ll even find a use for this thing anytime soon, but at least now I can say I’ve made my own sf2 before lol.

---

12/8 UPDATE: I decided to go back and update the soundfont! The notes don’t lag anymore, and everything is no longer super quiet! There are still a few issues, like the face that the bell notes at about F5 and above turn into weird clicks for some reason, and the fact that the “unpitched” sounds are too similar to the “pitched” ones, but it’s much more usable than it was before!

Here’s an example of the Marimba sound: https://youtu.be/47UpxFSzGJ8 Similar to the drum sounds, the keyboards more or less have the same type of attack because of how I fixed the laggy notes, so I’ll need to go back and figure out a way to fix that later (if I feel like it). That will likely require getting new samples, which means actually buying the software (because I’m all out of free trials), so who knows how long that’ll take if I actually decide to get into that. (This is less of me being lazy and more of me not wanting to drop a few hundred bucks just to slightly edit something that maybe 2 other people out there even know about)

In case you wanted to hear how bad the drums are, I also have an example here: https://youtu.be/eEBAIuWPK50 PLEASE take this one with a grain of salt I got the samples ages ago and didn’t know what I was doing lol. But now you see why I said the drums aren’t super usable right now (in an ensemble setting, at least).

I’ll update this post again if I make any more major changes to it! I’d like to get it to a point where I’d be confortable sharing the sf2 file with the rest of the world, but it’s just not there yet.